One Mistake
by hiddenmoments
Summary: One mistake is all it takes to send everything to hell in a handbasket, but there were a lot of mistakes happening that day. Ian, Don, Colby, Nikki, Liz, David. First in series based around Eighty Days.


_**Again, not mine. Less breakage, perhaps.**___

i.

If someone watching this clusterfuck happen tried to pinpoint where everything went wrong, they'd be hard-pressed to find a singular moment that could have sent the pendulum swinging away from disaster.

Already stunned as the butt of a rifle that might be his own becomes intimately acquainted with his temple, Ian Edgerton watches through drooping eyes as gunfire dances along the asphalt and a familiar figure is dragged towards a blurry van.

As his eyes close and hands tighten like a vice around his elbows, he figures that his big mistake was thinking that this was the same as long, solitary hunts and being good at one would translate to the other.

_ii._

Throat hoarse from shouting and arms quivering from the exertion, Don Eppes knows with a sickening certainty that they never should have come today. They should have, at the very least, had more backup. Four of his agents have their backs to the wall and solid cover. The sniper who hadn't made it to cover is in serious trouble and the panic that seizes his heart guides his next shot as the enemy closest to landing a blow crumples with a slug in his neck.

Something covers his nose and mouth suddenly and he lunges backwards, the back of his head connecting with a face. The crack of bone is satisfying until an arm wraps around his neck and his body gasps for air involuntarily. He changes his mind as his legs give out and he's dragged across the ground.

His mistake, he realises as the rag covers his eyes too and the ground tears at his skin, was not seeing that bastard with the chloroform rag.

_iii._

Colby Granger doesn't even have the breath left to shout as he watches, disbelieving, a man drag his boss across the ground and into a van. A scream diverts his attention enough to see their sniper cold-cocked and thrown into the same, now moving van.

Liquid fire sears across his bicep and all of a sudden there is plenty enough breath in his lungs to scream. The covering fire makes his ears ring as he slumps back against the wall while familiar voices swim in his ears and gentle fingers touch his arm.

Taking cover was the biggest mistake he made today, he decides as a voice speaks low, hurried, scared, into the radio about a setup and two agents down and missing. Taking cover was the biggest mistake that any of them could have made because he thinks that if he'd been in the thick of it he might have been able to get to them first.

_iv._

She had a lot of ideas about what the FBI was going to be like when she moved from LAPD. Too much gossip, too many preconceptions, too simple a set of pictures. None of them even approach the reality of it, she realises as the van skids around a corner with two of their own and leaving nothing but fleeing felons and bodies.

Her bleeding teammate, one of three left, is in the capable hands of another as she throws herself over the barrier they'd been using as cover and taking aim while a vengeful spirit in Kevlar comes to life and lets off a deafening rain of covering fire.

A delicate flower Nikki Betancourt is not and the three ruthless shots she takes, aimed at the knees, aren't mistakes. Right now she feels like maybe joining the FBI was the mistake because she'd never felt like this with the LAPD and it _hurts_.

_v_.

The blood against her hands is warm and slippery and goes only a little way towards assuaging the chill that has goosebumps spreading across her skin and tremors in her knees. His eyes are blank and terrified as he answers her quiet questions with single words or motions of his head while the others mop up whatever mess is left.

There isn't much left in the wake of the van. Bodies, blood, crippled felons spitting obscenities. Two gaping holes that stare like the empty eyes right there and her fingers tighten around the injured man's arm. He doesn't respond.

Liz Warner has never been one to live in the past or let regrets weigh her down but in this moment she knows that the mistake of not fighting harder for him will haunt her forever regardless of the outcome.

_vi_.

His voice holds steady despite the deafening blasts as he asks for a perimeter, traffic blocks, an APB and BOLO on the white van skidding around the corner. It breaks when he says that they're two agents down and firms again when he counts eight bodies on the ground. As an afterthought, he mentions that they might need an ambulance.

When the radio leaves his hand, David Sinclair completely disregards the three foot high barrier and lays down a round of covering fire above the fleeing heads as three more go down to carefully aimed shots.

He's done everything he can, he thinks as he roars in the face of one that went down from the knees. His mistake wasn't anything he could have done differently, it was thinking that he was going to be able to deal with the consequences.

* * *

**_Again, unexpected! For some reason, work seems to be the best place to write at the moment and you have no idea how encouraging the reviews I received were after not being sure whether it was terrible or not. Due to that encouragement, the next piece in the storyline is coming along too, a longer piece called _**_Times Two__**. I smashed out nearly the whole first part of it today after this was done. Don is up first and then Ian. The way it seems to be going, it comes across just a little less jumbled than Eighty Days and considerably less coherent than this. I'm not sure I'm an entirely reliable judge of jumbled and coherent though so we'll see how it turns out.**_


End file.
